"Life's shitty, and we're all gonna die. You have friends, and they die. You have a disease, someone you care about has a disease, Wall Street people are scamming everyone, the poor get poorer, the rich get richer. That's what we're surrounded by all the time. We don't understand why we're here, no one's giving us an answer, religion is vague, your parents can't help because they're just people, and it's all terrible, and there's no meaning to anything. What a terrible thing to process! Every. Day. And then you go to sleep. But then sometimes," he says, leaning forward, "things can suspend themselves for like a minute, and then every once in a while there's something where you find a connection."

Driver says it's this connection that he loves so much about acting, offering people a brief respite from the trials of their existence.

"I still don't feel like I've really put in my dues. Like it doesn't feel earned," Driver explains of his fame after joining the cast of HBO's "Girls" in 2012. "Everyone is so used to having everything immediately, and that doesn't seem to lend itself to things being good."